you look so pretty (but you're gone so soon)
by Slytherin Buttercat
Summary: "You're pretty for a monster." but even the pretty ones can't stay sane. (she's not a monster, she's not, she can't be. she's just her) One-shot.


**Golden Snitch: T'is a figure of speech: "yeah, sure, and Ron Weasley is blond"**

 **Assignment #7: Write a fic from the PoV of someone in captivity. Extra prompt: (quote) "You're pretty cute for a monster"**

 **Word Count: 1425**

 **Warnings: probably some torture, maybe some swearing**

* * *

 **you look so pretty (but you're gone so soon)**

* * *

Drip. Drip. Drip.

"Can't you turn that tap off?"

No answer.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

"I swear to Merlin, if you don't turn that bloody tap off I'm going to turn _you_ off!"

The Muggle appeared in her line of vision, his hair sticking up in many directions. "Sorry," he said, leaning over a sink to turn the tap off. He turned to look at her, narrowing bloodshot eyes. "Can you even perform this… magic without a wand?"

"Do you want to find out?" she spat, her brown eyes glaring at him as her dirty hands clutched onto the bars of the cage she was in.

"If you could perform magic without your wand you would have broken out of your cage by now," the Muggle said, stroking the brown wisps of his small beard.

"Wanna bet on that?" she snapped, her matted red hair shifting behind her.

The Muggle raised an unkempt eyebrow. "I could always stop your food intake for a few days," the Muggle said, glancing at the fridge to show he meant business.

She slumped down, leaning on the back of her cage. She was pretty sure it was a cage that was meant for dogs, not that that was degrading or anything. The fact that she had to do her business in the corner of her cage like she as a dog wasn't degrading either. Nothing was degrading anymore. She'd only been here for two days and everything was getting to her.

"Let's restart the tests, shall we?" the Muggle asked, putting on a white coat and some rubber gloves. He picked up a taser—at least, that was what he called it last time—and then all she knew was pain.

* * *

She came to a short while later, smelling like Hell and probably not looking much better. She spat out some remnants of blood from her mouth. In her cage was a bowl of water, and she couldn't put much thought into the implications of _that_ before she began to lap it up like the animal the Muggle thought she was. "You know, you're pretty cute for a monster," the Muggle said, popping a piece of chocolate into his mouth.

"Why are you doing this?" Her voice was raspy, like she had been screaming recently.

"I want to find out what makes you tick." The Muggle's voice was enthralled, like she truly was a specimen he could experiment on. "I want to know why you can do amazing things. I want to see if I can become like you."

"Yeah, sure, and Ron Weasley's blond."

The Muggle furrowed his eyebrows. "I don't understand: who's Ron Weasley?"

She sighed. "He's my uncle. He's about as far away from blond as you can get. It's a popular saying. I meant that that's likely not your reasoning."

"There are more of you?" the Muggle asked, focusing on only that bit of her statement. "Where can I find—"

"No," she said firmly. "There are no more people like _me_. Just where I'm from, everyone knows Ron Weasley."

The Muggle sighed. "How disappointing. Anyways, let's get back to business. I want to see if I can make you do this wandless magic."

Three. Two. One. Cue the pain.

* * *

The Muggle sat outside her cage, sitting cross-legged on the floor. When she blinked open her eyes and saw him, she jumped backwards into her pile of faeces. "How interesting," the Muggle said.

"What's interesting?" she asked weakly, too tired to argue at this point.

"This time around, you started calling out for someone called James Sirius. Who's James Sirius? Your boyfriend?"

She laughed weakly. "No. My brother. Asshole."

"Now, now, there's no need for profanities. I was just going to give you a meal as well."

She looked up at him, trying not to beg but begging at the same time. "Fine. I'll see if I can find you something to eat."

She leaned back on the bars of her cage as the Muggle in the white coat went to the fridge. She closed her eyes, and reopened them again when a packet of crisps and a raw onion found their way into her cage. Even the sight of the onion made her mouth water. She hadn't eaten in… two days? She was so hungry. "Don't eat it all at once," the Muggle said, laughing lightly to himself as he put cooked potatoes on his plate full of food.

* * *

She was so tired. So, so tired. She hadn't slept properly since before she was captured, before she made that awful bloody mistake. Let's do a magic trick in public because no one will bloody notice. Yeah. Bloody likely. Luckily she's had a lot of time to think about the consequences of her actions.

The pain was becoming too much but she didn't know what to do to stop it. She had never performed wandless magic before, not even when she was a kid. Everyone thought she was a Squib until her Hogwarts letter came. With a wand in her hand, she became the strongest witch in the room.

"Who's Issy?" the Muggle asked, twirling a strand of his hair around one dark finger.

"Issy. Isolde. One of my best friends." Isolde was always concerned about the way she was heading. It turned out her concerns were valid.

The Muggle learned more about her personal life every time he tortured her, but he never got want he wanted. A reaction. He wanted to see her magic again but it wasn't bloody working and she was in so much pain. Her leg twitched, out of her control, and her hands were shaking as she went to pick up the bowl of water. She splashed the water down her front, once, twice, but at this point she didn't care. She had no spark left.

* * *

When he walked in this time he had some contraption in his hand. He opened the cage door and put the contraption to her head. "Follow me. Now!"

She crawled out slowly and he grabbed her bony wrist painfully, his dark hands curling around it tightly. "What are you doing now?" she asked.

"X-raying you to see what extra organs you have. I should have done this a long time ago!"

That didn't lift her spirits. She was scanned and a screen appeared showing a skeleton with a glowing centre. "What's that?" the Muggle said, probably to himself. "Maybe I can extract—no, I don't want to risk killing my specimen. I'll have to try something else."

She was shoved back into her cage like the animal she was.

* * *

A few more sessions with the taser later, the Muggle looked a lot happier. "I know your name!"

She blinked her eyes twice, trying to find why that was so exciting to him. Maybe when she first came she had refused to give it to him? She couldn't remember. It was so many sessions ago. "That's good for you," she rasped, closing her eyes.

"No, you can't go to sleep now, Lily Luna Potter! You need to react!"

The taser hit her before she was fully asleep.

* * *

Aurors burst into the room, all flashy with spells from their wands as they struck the Muggle to the floor. "My baby," her father whispered, looking at her in her cage, surrounded by piles of her faeces and puddles of her pee. "You've been through a lot, but I'm here for you now. I'm going to get you out."

She reached out a dirty hand to touch the bars where her father was crouched. "Please…"

Her eyes closed as a light spell hit her.

* * *

Clean. That was her first thought when she woke up. The room smelled clean. She blinked open her weary eyes and noticed that the room _looked_ clean too. Was she clean? She weakly lifted up a hand. That was clean too, only with a few red scabs on it. What kind of Heaven was she in?

"Hey, baby," a male voice said softly. Her father.

"Daddy…"

"His name was Reece Day. He is—was—a Muggle scientist who thought you were a perfect specimen for a test, so he took you to his lab in America. I'm so, so sorry that I didn't find you soon enough."

"What's… going to happen to him?" Her voice was still raspy. Will that ever be fixed?

"He's going to Azkaban, where he belongs." Her mother's voice was sharp, but welcome. She had missed her so much…

"It'll all be fine now, baby. Get some rest."

Lily Luna closed her eyes. She was home.

* * *

 **This didn't turn out to be as good as I expected. But oh wellllll. I love Lily Luna and seeing my poor baby like this is so upsetting for me. Her mother and father are fricking annoyed at Reece Day because he stole the spark from their feisty little girl.**

 **~Buttercat**


End file.
